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Post by bungo the mungo on Jun 13, 2019 16:06:02 GMT
hugely upsetting.  |
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rayge
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Post by rayge on Jun 17, 2019 19:01:12 GMT
That terrace of white over black buildings just right of middle looking out on the destruction: I worked there occasionally in one of those top floor offices - the one in the middle of the five I think – 2008-11.
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Jun 20, 2019 8:48:04 GMT
How do Londoners feel about the city now?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2019 10:33:12 GMT
How do Londoners feel about the city now? I have very little interest in most of it. It's just this bland international city for the rich. |
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Post by Reasonable good Nick on Jun 20, 2019 10:43:26 GMT
How do Londoners feel about the city now? I have very little interest in most of it. It's just this bland international city for the rich. G's turned into John Cleese  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2019 11:12:30 GMT
Very few people who really loved London thirty ago will love it now, why would they? It's changed so much.
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Post by Reasonable good Nick on Jun 20, 2019 11:24:08 GMT
Very few people who really loved London thirty ago will love it now, why would they? It's changed so much. I imagine it has, though I've only really got to know London in the last decade, so I can't comment. Is it the loss of character G, or something else? |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2019 11:40:46 GMT
Very few people who really loved London thirty ago will love it now, why would they? It's changed so much. I imagine it has, though I've only really got to know London in the last decade, so I can't comment. Is it the loss of character G, or something else? Mainly that. It feels like it's been handed over to soulless developers. It's lost its edge, its distinctiveness and its character. The days when you could wander through Soho at 3 in the morning and end up at a shebang with a load of gangsters and actresses are long gone.. |
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Jun 20, 2019 13:05:50 GMT
Would it be fair to say London has suffered from that sorta thing more than many other major cities?
There is a lot of faceless developments and some unattractive additions to the skyline. The centre has long since been abandoned to yer Pret a Mingers and Starbucks which is a real shame as well but that kind of homogenisation is everywhere these days (one of the downsides to globalisation).
I have to say, the amount of money swilling about the place does bring out the Scottish in me. Walking around parts of London these days it just seems to be tourists and hoorah henry types from the city and the home counties for whom the city is their natural playground after graduating.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2019 13:09:33 GMT
Would it be fair to say London has suffered from that sorta thing more than many other major cities? There is a lot of faceless developments and some unattractive additions to the skyline. The centre has long since been abandoned to yer Pret a Mingers and Starbucks which is a real shame as well but that kind of homogenisation is everywhere these days (one of the downsides to globalisation). I have to say, the amount of money swilling about the place does bring out the Scottish in me. Walking around parts of London these days it just seems to be tourists and hoorah henry types from the city and the home counties for whom the city is their natural playground after graduating. The more interesting parts of London are further out now. Parts of South London have got pretty hip for example. |
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Jun 20, 2019 13:20:50 GMT
Hip as in Nathan barley hip or just normal hip? I guess cities like London are always changing but when normal folk can't afford to live anywhere near the centre (or non-chain shops afford rent) then something is inevitably lost.
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Post by Reasonable good Nick on Jun 20, 2019 13:43:58 GMT
Would it be fair to say London has suffered from that sorta thing more than many other major cities? Manchester must by now be considered the second city of the UK, and you can see it beginning to happen here. I think I've mentioned on here before that Mancunian friends have told me that The Curry Mile is now unrecognisable from what it was a couple of decades ago. Many of the restaurants run by affirmedly British Asians, that were enthusiastically patronised by Brits of all kinds, have turned into Arab-run sheesha cafés and confectionary shops catering largely to Arab students and recent immigrants. I've lived here since the end of 2012 and I'm noticing incremental changes even since then. It still has a lot of character of course, but some parts of the city centre are becoming anonymous. Anywhere, instead of somewhere, to borrow a phrase. |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2019 14:01:50 GMT
Hip as in Nathan barley hip or just normal hip? A bit of both of both probably.  Places like Crystal Palace are going through that arty phase, but you know the big developments are just around the corner. |
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Post by DarknessFish on Jun 20, 2019 14:54:29 GMT
Manchester must by now be considered the second city of the UK, and you can see it beginning to happen here. I've lived here since the end of 2012 and I'm noticing incremental changes even since then. It still has a lot of character of course, but some parts of the city centre are becoming anonymous. Anywhere, instead of somewhere, to borrow a phrase. Hmm, you won't remember the glory days before the IRA bomb then? The Corn Exchange, the big beige Arndale centre (I know some of the building is still bedecked in toilet-tiles, but nothing compared to how it looked before). It was all a bit shit. You'd struggle to find anyone who thinks it's lost much, I would've thought. I do miss the Corn Exchange, to be fair, but Manchester was always quite an anonymous town centre. The northern quarter is the only bit of the centre with any character, and that's really expanded rather than become gentrified, though there may be fewer adult shops than previously. It's still pretty grimy. |
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Post by rayge on Jun 20, 2019 15:33:37 GMT
How do Londoners feel about the city now? It's odd, but I never really identified as a Londoner, even though I was born and lived there (in Tottenham) for the first 16 years, Putney from 1974-77 and Cricklewood and Kilburn 1974-90, which is still in total more than half my life. Partly it was because, coming from Tottenham, rather than, say, Stamford Hill, Edmonton, Wood Green or Crouch End, neighbouring boroughs that didn't have a famous football team, I could tell people I met from outside London that that was where I was from, without having to explain further: partly because until the Greater London Council reorganization in the late 1960s, it wasn't actually in London, it was part of Middlesex, as it had been since the Domesday Boke, but mainly that for most of my childhood and up to going to Uni I hardly ever met anyone who wasn't a Londoner. It's a big place and we (my nuclear family) didn't get out much. But that lot probably belongs in the Identity thread.
Another thing is, what is London? Visitors see only the centre, the City, the Thames, perhaps they get up to Hampstead and Regents Park or along to Greenwich, but there's so fucking much of it, literally hundreds of old villages and hamlets, as well as developments on farmland from the 16th to the 19th centuries, all of them with a slightly different character.
When I lived in London as an adult, I loved reading about the social, industrial, criminal and architectural history of this great sprawl, tracing the lost rivers, going to the London Museum, the social and criminal history, so much of it. I used to amuse myself by going on long walks through all the villages, by the simple expedient of drawing a straight line to my destination on the A to Z and following it as close as I could. Or I'd go path-finding ways to get from A to B via enclaves of greenery and Victorian and Edwardian parks. I could walk from Cricklewood to the Spurs ground, for instance, via Hampstead Heath, Highgate Woods and Finsbury Downhills and Bruce Castle Parks, five miles or so with only about a third of it through streets, and each of those from a different time-period, with different characteristics.
Anyway, I am less happy about spending time in London these days than I have ever been before, but I'm not so sure it's because London has changed, although of course it certainly has in so many superficial ways, so much as that who I am and what I want has changed.
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